I’ve decided I am a selfish person. A lady I don’t know from
the senior hall, who also donated a car-seat blanket to the craft sale, tracked
me down and asked me if she could have a copy of my pattern. It’s a basket
weave and she uses a standard stocking stitch. I’m not sure where the original
pattern is---I printed it off the internet---but I’ve made it so many times
it’s in my head. I could probably write it out for her but here’s where my
selfish side is coming in. I don’t want to! People rave over how pretty that
basket weave pattern is and it’s the only claim to crafting fame I have down at
the senior hall. If she starts making them, too, well, you know where this is
going. I did tell her the name of the stitch so she could easily adapt her pattern
but that wasn’t good enough. She wants it written out. So what do I do? Do I
give it to her even though I’d rather not, or do I play the forgetful, old
woman card the next time she asks?
Knitting has been this week’s theme. My niece-in-law wants
me to teach her how to read patterns, do increases and decreases, make mittens
and do a cable stitch so I’ve been preparing samples and finding hand-outs for
my mini class. I’ve never made a mitten in my life until this week, but she’s
got a bunch of young grand-babies and years of mitten making ahead of her so the
lesson will be time well spent.
Christian author and speaker, Joyce Meyer, says, “If selfishness
is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being
happy.” If that’s true---and I have no reason to believe it’s not---then what
does it mean when we are selfish in one situation (like not giving patterns to
strangers) but generous with others as in sharing my time and knowledge with
someone I know and love? Am I two-faced or is it human to be inconsistent with a
basic value of living in a complex society? Is there a little calculator in our
heads that keeps track of the long-term and short-term consequences of our
selfless and selfish actions? Author and political commentator, Alan Dershowitz
seems to recognize selfishness isn’t a black and white issue. “Good character
consists of recognizing selfishness that inheres in each of us” he says, “and
trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire.”
I started thinking about all this a few days ago when I was reading a
blog written by a woman who calls herself a “widow” but the man she loved and
who died was a married man. She told about how she had gone to a grief
support meeting and left in tears because she thought the other women there would “judge
her” if she told her story. Well, duh!
She also said she felt all alone at the funeral because the man’s wife was
“getting all the condolences.” Well,
double duh, Sweetie! The woman who writes the check for the funeral usually does get that privilege. Call me crazy, but to me
it would be an act of pure, audacious selfishness to expect widows at a support
group to welcome her with an open heart and
loving arms if she spills the beans about having affair
with a dearly departed. But what do I know about selfishness and
selflessness, I’m the woman who doesn’t even want to give a stranger a knitting
pattern!
I couldn’t get her story out of my mind. Where does a non-widow like
her go to find support? Is there an app for that? I consulted Google and guess
what. What she is going through actually has a name. Its call ‘disenfranchised
grief’---grief you can’t talk about because it’s considered unacceptable to
others. I learn something new every day! And now I suppose I need to go Google how to atone for my judgmental, SNL church-lady persona. ©
